Even unskilled people benefit from good economic conditions - but they are often unemployed

The unemployment rate of unskilled workers has dropped in the last year. But the risk of unemployment is five times higher than that of the educated.
There are huge differences between the regions.

24 Jan 2018
| Press Release No. 4

The unemployed, who have no vocational training have also benefited of the outstanding labor market development in 2017. According to the latest data from the Federal Employment Agency's (BA) statistics, their unemployment rate has decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 18.7 percent compared to 2016. However, the risk of unskilled workers being unemployed is still considerably greater than that of skilled workers. The unemployment rate was about five times higher than for those with occupational or vocational training, whose rate was 3.8 percent. The lowest unemployment rates are found in academics, of which only 2.5 percent were unemployed. Compared to the previous year, the unemployment rates of people with occupational or vocational training decreased by 0.4 points and for academics by 0.1 points.

Regional differences

From a regional point of view, enormous differences are apparent, especially for unskilled workers. The trend is that the higher the overall unemployment rates in a region, the clearer are the differences in qualifications. In regions with a low unemployment rate, the difference in unemployment among people with and without training is lower than in regions with a high unemployment rate.

The lowest unemployment rates are measured in the southern German district of Eichstätt: The quotas range from 0.9 percent for academics to 1.2 percent for a company or school-trained and 4.3 percent for unskilled workers. The highest rate of an unskilled worker was recorded in the East German circle Uckermark with 49.7 percent. The unemployment rates for company-trained and school-trained and for academics amount to 10.3 and 2.8 percent, respectively.

Data and background

The labor market data on the qualification groups are compiled in the table "Qualification-specific unemployment rates (annual values)." The methods report "Introduction of qualification-specific unemployment rates in BA statistics" describes the methodology. The publications can be accessed via the following links: